The Summer I Learned to Float

The problem with Aspen Lake wasn't the lake itself. It was Leo, and the fact that he played padel tennis like his life depended on it, and that I was definitely not the kind of girl who belonged at the country club anyway.

"You coming?" Chloe called from the padel court, where she looked perfect in her pastel skirt even though she'd been playing for two hours. "Leo's asking about you."

I shook my head, aiming for casual but probably landing somewhere near pathetic. "Nah, think I'm gonna go for a run instead."

Running was safe. Running didn't require me to make conversation while sweating through a t-shirt I'd bought on sale. Running was just me and the dirt path and the burning feeling in my lungs that made sense in a way nothing else did.

But then there was the water.

The lake had this dock that extended forever into the middle, and at night, when the rich kids were doing their weird choreographed drinking games and the adults were pretending not to notice them, the water went glass-still. Like the world had pressed pause.

I found him there on the third night—Leo, sitting at the edge of the dock, his legs dangling into the blackness.

"You swim?" he asked, like it was the most normal thing in the world to be lurking at a dock at midnight.

"Not really." I sat beside him anyway, because my brain had apparently stopped working. "You?"

He laughed. "Not in the traditional sense. More like... existing in water with purpose?"

That's when I noticed it. A small bear tattoo on his shoulder, barely visible in the moonlight.

"Is that—"

"A bear?" He nodded. "My little sister's obsessed with them. Got it for her birthday last year, which is legally problematic and possibly the dumbest thing I've ever done, but here we are."

We sat there for an hour while he told me about hating padel, about how his dad measured success in tournament brackets, about how he'd been swimming in this lake since he was six and the water was the only place he didn't feel like a disappointment.

"You know what's funny?" he said finally. "Everyone thinks bears are these scary monsters. But they spend like half their lives just floating in rivers, letting the water take them somewhere."

"Really?"

"Google it. They're basically just huge, furry zen masters."

The next day, I skipped my run. I showed up at the padel court with a racquet I'd found in my parents' garage, and when Chloe asked what had gotten into me, I just smiled.

Later, Leo taught me how to float. Properly. Arms out, legs loose, letting the water hold you instead of fighting it.

"See?" he said, while I drifted beneath a sky so blue it hurt. "Bears knew what they were doing."